Sally Peters is director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. In July 2011, she led a session on vocation in contemporary life at Princeton Theological Seminary’s conference “Perspectives on Vocation for the 21st Century.”

Rockbridge Seminary is the nation’s first online-only seminary. Its offices are in Springfield, Mo. It reports an enrollment rate growing at 29 percent. Contact through President Daryl Eldridge.

The Associated Press posted a video on YouTube of the white smoke that signaled a decision had been made.

William Saletan in Slate on April 28, 2013 rounds up several stories that explore the possible explanations and motivations behind the radicalization of the suspects.

An April 23, 2013 Associated Press story says questioning of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by authorities indicated “the two brothers were motivated by an anti-American, radical version of Islam.” A CNN story adds that the older brother was the driving force behind the attacks and that they had no contact with international terrorist groups but were affected by watching videos online.

Read an April 28, 2013 article by John Blake at CNN about extremism.

Read a May 3, 2013 Time magazine essay about what the latest neuroscience says about the biological origins of evil actions.

Read a May 6, 2013 Rolling Stone article that analyses media’s effect on radicalism. It quotes John Horgan, director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University, as downplaying the idea that young men can “self-radicalize” by watch YouTube videos and reading Al Qaeda magazines.”

Lana A. Whited is professor of English and journalism at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Va., and editor of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon (University of Missouri, 2002). She co-authored a chapter on moral issues.